Behavioural Economics Questions

The following simple questions will provide an indication as to how your decision making can be influenced through implicit assumptions. Taking a few minutes to complete the questions as it will provide you with very powerful insights into how easily conscious thinking can be influenced.

1. A bat and a base-ball cost $1.10 together. The bat costs $1.00 more than the base ball. How much do the bat and the base-ball cost individually?

Bat costs:_____________ Base Ball costs: ___________

2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? (A widget is an economic euphemism for ‘product’ or ‘thingie’ – there is a reason that economists are not engineers)

How long?____________

3. There is a lake suffering from a blue-green algae bloom. Every day the size of the bloom doubles. If it takes 48 days for the bloom to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half the lake?